you live on one hundred thirty three bucks a month for food i should try it because you know how fabulous bad luck i got so many i mean i have my hand at such and i know that i'm seamlessly really messed up . in the old story so personally. it's. the worst you're going to. lie down sort of a. radio guy and for a minute from me i think i want to get closure opposed to just you've never seen anything like that and i'm so. happy monday guys i'm having martin and this is breaking the set so today began a long awaited trial of british petroleum or b.p. for the largest offshore oil spills in history and now quotes the u.s.

government blaming the corporation for the disaster that killed eleven rig workers and dumped four million barrels of crude oil into the gulf of mexico you know with even more interest when you have the government so quick to pass the buck and place the blame on b.p. now they work so willing to do that immediately following the disaster in fact they issued to the company even more oil and gas contracts and further solidify their but in love with the corporation if you ask me saw this in giant charade one smoke screen after the other what's comfortable let's break that. coming from the largest military empire in the world it's a wonder how little the establishment discusses the implications of war the downtrodden economy has taken center stage and the discussion of u.s. foreign policy has waned into a mere afterthought this is pose a challenge for many antiwar activists who've been forced to get creative looking for ways to engage and educate people about the perils of u.s.

militarism one such person is a world renowned peace activist cindy sheehan who's a taurus for her actions like camping out at george bush's ranch in crawford texas in two thousand and five now so he's taken her activism on the road with a new proposal called torent deep peace cross-country bike tour starting on april fourth in vacaville california and in july third right here in washington d.c. so to talk about this ambitious initiative and what it hopes to achieve and joined by my friend cindy sheehan antiwar activist former vice presidential candidate for the peace and freedom party and author of peace mom a mother's journey through heartache to activism cindy thanks so much for coming on. it's always great to talk to you and thank you for having me on of course this is an extremely ambitious initiative i commend you for what you're doing i think it's amazing talk about the demands that this tour has because i know it's not just about the war what other issues are you trying to call attention to. will return in

a close attention to whistle blowers and the war economy and the money spent on trying to call attention to the fact that there are war crimes happening right now but the previous administrations committed war crimes and crimes against humanity and the current administration is protecting. war criminals while they're persecuting was simpler hours and there are social justice and peace activists also and so you know i am upset with obama. as usual but i learned when they. the movement or the lack of movement in the middle men and so d.c. is an important place we learn to organize across the country we weren't to rally people together to say that these wars are still happening. or has expanded africa thirty five or thirty six countries where u.s.

troops are drones are and it's just pitiful the lack of response to it we have been organized seeing peace i mean i'm sorry turn to peace now for several weeks we have a couple dozen people who are committed to helping us across the country but you can be assured if it were if it were romney as president mccain or bush we'd have a couple thousand people committed to it so it's very frustrating that so many people have situational principles is they're against these things when a republican is in our office but not so much when a democrat is an office and obama of course like i said expanding the u.s. troop presence in africa he's barmy or has bombed about eight muslim countries and gives me just despicable that there is like you said there's very little test against we've been trying i've been trying since he's been president and i'm hoping

more people will become involved and get excited about this trip because it's wrong no matter who's president well of course you know as president absolutely i mean as you know the antiwar movement of course has taken a big hit under obama despite the expansion of the drone wars like you just said some say it's worse than ground troops because it detaches people from the ground of war you know one of the very few activists and he has remained steadfast despite the change in party leadership i mean but then again you're saying that you know what we would have a couple thousand or from your president and doesn't the signify though that liberals and democrats don't care about these. issues i mean legitimately what else going to fix what i was going to be. well that's what i said i said they have situational principles and and the situation that the pins are on is who is in office and so we run we run a focus or in the movement or the liberals want to focus on the things that they

think that the right republicans are responsible for like this current economic crisis when found out. attaching the facts that we're spending trillions of dollars a year on the empire and obama is responsible for that he's a commander in chief so you know it's just and then the environmental movement is not talking about how and we're very proud environment on this tour to we're taking bicycles instead what i call dynamo beals and so the establishment environmental movement isn't talking about the military industrial complex that sucks out more oil and fuel than any other institution in the world and pollutes everywhere it goes it was a rainy with all kinds of talks and you know there's a lot of issues where dressin are mature absolutely of course it's all connected which is really so infuriating the people don't see the connection of the economy

the environment everything with the military i wanted to quickly look at a map right now of all the cities that are firmest so far you know that there might be some added on the tour we're looking at there right now city what are your plans for each city here. it's effort in. speaking talk about that. well the part that you have on is the first part of the tour that's taking route sixty-six winches also the called the mother road which i think is very significant because women and mothers are the ones that suffer the most i think because of these wars for empire but what we're hoping to do is rally people in every city. we have. you know many people who have signed up to host we're going to need housing we're going to need people's monster rally. meetings and fundraise the end to get across the country and any money that we have left over our goal is going to go to. groups that help people in iraq and

afghanistan so we're hoping to raise a lot of money about what it's going to cost to go across the country and then the second part goes for chicago to washington d.c. in our full rig is published on our website to work at p.s. so if you're on a rig or if you're little bit off our route we don't mind going off the route a little bit and get ahold of us at two hundred apiece or again volunteer to organize in your community because we just really want to know in two thousand and five when i count out in george bush's right you are the antiwar movement was very demoralized very discouraging that rally people are and were hoping that this is going to rally people cross the country and we're going through the heart of america we're not you know we're not skipping the flyovers zone where most activism happens i want to close because a closer you know more progressive but we're going to the heart of america and we

have a nonpartisan two are not blaming the republicans we're not blaming the democrats are blaming the system and it's going to take everybody no matter you know what your political identification is to change things for the better well thank you so much send it toward a piece everyone check it out i'm really looking forward to this happening let's definitely touch base of the when you get here your end goal washington d.c. i really like in florida that's the new she had always also have you on thank you abby and see you in d.c. . i completely forgot about the oscars last night but when i checked out what had gone down in the blogosphere i realized that all i had really missed out on was a bunch of self adoration bad humor and military propaganda and i'll get to that in a second but first i want to highlight a man who despite so many odds traveled all the way from palestine to the oscars to

represent the plight of his people his name is emad burnat and he's the co-director of the oscar document nominated documentary five broken cameras check it out. just look at the. situation for. her. it's a movie document in the struggle of palestinians living a day to day life under military occupation stricken with constant harassment and intimidation and a culture that by and large of voids the palestine issue it was great to see the academy given due to this film unfortunately being nominated wasn't enough to provide easy passage for imad to attend the ceremony because upon his arrival he

and his family were detained by customs and border patrol who could not fathom that a palestinian muslim man would be given such an honor in a statement he made about the incident imad likened it to what palestinians encounter on a daily basis he said quote although this was an unpleasant experience this is a daily occurrence for palestinians every single day throughout the west bank there are more than five hundred israeli checkpoints roadblocks and other barriers to movement across our land and not a single one of us has been spared the experience that my family and i experienced yesterday ours was a very minor example of what my people face every day. even though he eventually got there and surprisingly the film didn't win and i can't imagine what winning would have meant for the issue of large an issue for which we never hear or see the full story i truly hope that day will soon come until then for braving the injustice you made at home and here in the us you mad bernard you were my hero

today. so now let's backtrack a little bit because there are a couple things i'd like to call out from last night and no it's not the fact that the onion crudely called the nine year old best actress nominee the four letter c. word although that was very odd when i do want to talk about as the first lady as i'm sure you know by now michelle obama was the presenter for the most coveted award of the night best picture now. moment we have all been waiting. and the os goes to. argo. you might be wondering why in the hell white house official would take part in this hollywood ritual but if one looks at their tight relationship that's not the part that's surprising after all we know that hollywood has been one of obama's biggest campaign funders perhaps the most disturbing part of all of this is that michelle obama dressed like she was an oscar winner herself announce the award from the

white house surrounded by military personnel don with war medals not to mention that the actual board went to argo a film why is the cia for its home roic were rescued americans from its evil iranian captors yes the film was captivating and it did give some context to hostile relations between the two countries but of course argos villain is the country most vilified today by the government and media so how fitting it would come from the wife of the man who inherited the military empire in the war machine that's what i like to call very sophisticated propaganda less obvious of course the number one cia propaganda bestseller zero dark thirty so who is the villain won't let skopec how to me a group that's ninety four percent white and seventy seven percent male look in an age of such diversity in emerging ideas it's curious that the people making these decisions represent the demography of the twentieth century so the old white click

of men who probably loves having the military and the president intimately involved in their precious award ceremony. you guys are the villains today. if you're wondering what i'm doing when i'm not on air you can follow me on twitter having martin like what you see fight all my treatment into segments from the show as well as random thoughts i had throughout the day and also please help us get a break in the set one day and on twitter ok janelle throw some hash tags we can get trending on the twitter sphere but only with your help so head to twitter dot com and check now at abby martin now to take a break from my preaching but stay tuned to hear more about oh president obama's plans for trade next.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for like sleep you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm trying hard luck and was a big picture. let me let me are going to let me ask you a question. here on this network and it's what we have in the bank we have our knives out. but the truth is this time it was just about staying there to get here in a situation where b. and i don't want to talk about the mainland me.

potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit stunning in a few hours from new york to maine we have team. coverage of the storm. but what we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston proper earlier today it was very sticky you can see it start to become much more powdery down here the bottom line there is still a lot of snow out here a good place for snowball fight. d.c. it is going to pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout much of in life nobody is allowed to be driving lessons from emergency vehicles are exceptions. this is good as you shall receive anything like this right.

now i want to bring up one of the most significant and most secretive trade negotiations in history being dealt as we speak it's called the transpacific partnership where the t.p. p. currently trade negotiations are ongoing among the levin countries including australia. chile malaysia is the on her route singapore the us and of vietnam most recently canada and mexico join the talks with japan showing a strong possibility of coming on board as well the t p p has been long criticized by activists and trade attorneys as a threat to national sovereignty he won rights internet freedoms and the environment so help me break down the t p p the two a.p. free trade versus fair trade i'm joined by mike dolan legislative representative for the international brotherhood of teamsters thank you so much for coming on the things are happening and thank you for your interest in the d.p.p. and treasury one should be interested in it because i understand that it has very serious implications but before we get into those breakdown what exactly is sure

officially officially now the t p p the trans-pacific partnership is a set of ongoing trade negotiations as you mentioned eleven countries including mexico and canada now that are that are in it they've just concluded the fifteenth round of those negotiations down auckland new zealand i had great honor and pleasure of representing the teamsters down there and all of them for that round of negotiations the next round coming up in singapore one important thing that your viewers need to know about these negotiations is that it's really the last time we're going to be negotiating a multilateral free trade agreement it's called the docking agreement and any other countries that want to get into a free trade deal with us after just joining this thing after. the fact so that's the kind of the official version unofficial i have to say that it's really part of a larger geo political effort to marginalize china economically in the pacific rim

so you think about that commercial japanese in the geopolitics of the pacific rim and it has as much to do with our diplomatic goals our political goals as it does to do with so called trade policy and what are its implications i understand and maybe you can correct me on this but it instills an international court that resides over u.s. law shared laws yeah that's one of the most controversial aspects of the t.p. you're referring to the investor in a state dispute settlement regime this is a legacy of nafta the mother of all train fights a north american free trade agreement in chapter eleven which is the investment chapter in this town investor to state that's really an important thing for your viewers investor corp investment only shall we. government federal and sub federal governments for and this is you know not a government to government solution he's in these tribunals they're like world.

trade court and. trade bureaucrats who make decisions out of the public view based on what the. corporations think of their their commercial interests that are being violated by by. governments you know democratically elected governments that are impinging on their expectations of profits under this agreement very controversial and that's the part that you're talking about investors and as you just mention kind of beneath the public view i mean we're talking about over six hundred corporate advisors overseeing the negotiations but really a huge lack of public involved here no i mean that's exactly right not only is the end result secretive those investors the state dispute mechanisms. but the process by which they're getting to close this deal is also very secretive and that's for those of us who've been working on trade policy for a while one of the most concerning aspects that you know even members of congress

don't have access to see this thing of course and no wonder our constitution article one section eight it's the congress you know that has exclusive authority over the commerce among nations our trade policy and the congress right now with fifteen rounds of these negotiations completed still hasn't actually seen the text of the agreement. and there's some reasons for that highly troubling mike not problem arising and i also know that there was a leak to portion of the tepee negotiations that kind of mimicked. on an international level which is not very comforting as well i mean what you're getting to was like who's going to benefit. who are the winners who are the losers sure i mean i've got easy one i mean you know one of the easy answer is the one percent and then ninety nine percent lose but it's not just the ninety nine percent in the united states it's the ninety nine percent globally this is just another string of trade agreements under the nafta the sort of flawed and failed to model the nafta w

t o model where the investment in corporate elites are given incentives to move production around the world to the places with the least labor laws the lowest wage rates and the least consumer and environmental protections and creating that incentive system through the various chapters of the t p p is the reason why barack obama's administration has u.s.t.r. he's keeping these these negotiations secret from the congress and the american people right now. but you know we just heard about the state of the union talking about how great the t.p. would be he also talks about the tea a.p.i. but you know let's get to solutions here when you represent an organization that talks about fair trade versus free trade how do we get back to fair. here yeah so what a great question i have to say that you know the other trade agreement that you brought up in in the state of the union other than the p.d.p. was the european union us all right so it's an interesting problem for those of us

who are fair trade activists in europe for example the wage rates and the labor laws are in many cases superior to what we have in the united states so i look at that agreement as a possibility of upward harmonization of standards rather than what is their traditional model lowering those standards you know i'm cautiously optimistic that negotiations haven't started there yet but as far as the t.p. goes what obama promised us was what he called at the time in his first term at the beginning of his first term twenty first century and agreement and those of us who supported him the labor movement in particular in his election or really excited about that was you can i mean strong labor standards in three simple environmental standards consumer protections and does he look like we're going to. be inside were going back thank you mike dolan the legislative representative for the teamsters i

think that we still have hope we always have hope if we can just wake people up on this daily in this thanks a lot for your time thanks abbi. thank you. let's talk about what a nuclear waste does the environment on the friday washington state government officials announced just how much talk sick waste has made its way to quote me a river subterranean basin from a nuclear site in southern washington the radioactive soup is leaking from six underground tanks at the hand nuclear facility which has been regarded as the most contaminated site in the entire country it was developed as a nuclear weapons production facility in one thousand nine hundred three as part of a manhattan project and has since held millions of leaders of radioactive leftovers this nuclear sludge is held in storage tanks that have long ago reached their twenty year lifespans now you heard me right these tanks that hold radioactive

waste expire in just twenty years so not only is nuclear material being kept in containers that eventually deteriorate but leakage from the containers has been record of the site since the sixty's since then nearly two hundred of these toxic bins have already failed according to washington state officials the leaks produce between one hundred fifty to three hundred gallons every year meaning that thousands of tons of nuclear sewage of already been contaminating the environment at the site for decades now if you're feeling outraged but the criminal negligence allowing one of the most beautiful states in the country to poison for the last half century should be but you might want to hold on to that anger because it's about to get worse finally state and federal officials agree that a cleanup at the site must be made one small problem no nuclear waste doesn't really go away no matter how much money the robot the problem it's there to stay

for centuries a new report by the department of energy said the lowest estimate of the clean up at one hundred and fifteen billion dollars and is expected to last until twenty ninety and of course the bill is for you and me the taxpayers to front always. falls in the backs of the people doesn't it even the location of these sites are designed to take advantage of the most vulnerable the hanford site was constructed in a sparsely populated mountain region other than the two hundred fifty thousand residents that are just downstream from the nuclear site there are also at least six native american reservations that are adverse to the affected hanford is just another example of what journalist chris hedges refers to as one of capitalisms sacrifice zones which he describes as quote areas that have been destroyed for quarterly profit and we're talking about environmentally destroyed communities destroyed human beings destroyed families destroyed and because there are no impediments left

these sacrifices zones are just going to continue to spread outward. the idea here is just like human beings as human beings just like the natural resources of our planet have become commodities to be exploited and abused and result of which is collapse in the current trajectory this is unavoidable this exploitation is the byproduct of predatory capitalism you just a look at the most and areas of the country where natural resources a bound and political influence is most scarce places like the coal mines about. where the profits made on the backs of the laborers fill the pockets of the rich coal barons who live far from the contaminated soils degradative waters and polluted air look the damage that hanford leaks have caused as a reparable but the remaining threat posed as we move forward is far worse these sacrifice sounds may seem far away from what you and i know now but what would you do if this was in your backyard because soon it might be but we don't halt the

gears of this machine we become the gears for the machine. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for you think you understand it and then you glimpse

something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. the are all. going to. go to. the crime.